People always seem to bring their spouse when they come to adopt and animal, so I've gotten a great feel for who pairs up with who in Boulder. Sometimes it's really surprising, but usually people date/marry close to their level the hotness scale. Two hippies, two CU econ majors, or the most common combo, scrawny nerd + chubby spouse (the chubby one always wears the pants). When they come with children it makes for extra surprises. Sometimes the kids match, sometimes they miraculously escape their parents' vices, and sometimes they amplify the one drop of weirdness in a great gene pool. Yesterday I worked with an exceptionally chubby/nerdy couple and their two gross children. The six year old was a puppy-chucking bastard (the puppy landed just right and was fine, phew), and the four year old looked just like gollum from LOTR.

He had the ears, the pointy teeth, bulgy eyes, white complexion with red spots, even the limp and scraggly hair. Just add a double chin, a beer gut, and a mutant ninja turtles t-shirt and you've got this kid. He was not only hideous, but also terribly behaved. His parents' unsubstantiated scolding was no match for his desire to stomp in the fresh puddle of urine every time he passed as he ran shrieking in circles of the patio (because really, why prevent your child from splattering himself, you, and nearby strangers in dog pee?). They did manage, with stellar parental techniques like distraction and begging, to keep him from licking the urine puddle. The puddle was finally drying up when the puppy let loose some wicked diarrhea. I kid you not, this toddler made a bee-line and got his tongue within inches of the shit before his parents intervened. The older kid picked up and threw the puppy while his parents were asking me how to tell that the puppy wouldn't get very big or be energetic. I was just telling them that this catahoula/hound mix will most likely be both when the puppy yelped behind me and they waddled over to their child and explained how it wasn't nice to throw puppies. And yes, they adopted the adorable, beautifully brindled, and very good-natured puppy. And no, they've never owned a dog and haven't done a scrap of research.